Despite their attack on Liberal Democrat proposals, Labour and the Conservatives have pursued a similar policy

Alan Travis

guardian.co.uk, Friday 23 April 2010 18.37 BST

Labour and the Conservatives are targeting the Liberal Democrats' policy of an amnesty for illegal migrants, hoping it will prove the achilles heel that will lead to Nick Clegg's downfall.

But both parties have overseen at least four back-door amnesties over the last 20 years and presided over an immigration system that operates a 14-year rule allowing long-term illegal residents to be granted indefinite leave to remain.

Like Conservative and Labour home secretaries before him, Clegg says he is not proposing a blanket amnesty. Instead, he calls it a "route to citizenship" that would allow people who have been in Britain for 10 years, who speak English, who have a clean record and who want to live here long term to "earn" citizenship.

In this week's leaders' debate, Gordon Brown said this would encourage more people to come to Britain illegally while David Cameron predicted it would trigger a big increase in asylum claims. But Clegg bluntly told both that it was simply not credible to deport the hundreds ofthousands of irregular migrants who were already here: "You can't deport 900,000 people. You don't know where they live," he said.

It is something both Cameron and Brown should acknowledge, because granting amnesties in all but name is what their home secretaries have been doing for the past 20 years ....

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The rest of the article is at the above link.

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